Baxter said they tried multiple therapies, and Michael recovered and was sober for more than a year before relapsing. During his recovery, he used "rattle art" to cope, creating larger-than-life portraits. Several paintings of Native Americans and young women line the walls of a front room in the Baxter home.

"This is the first one he did and it just blew us away," Baxter said, pointing to a portrait of a wrinkled man with piercing eyes.

Baxter is not alone in her attempt to cope. She has joined other parents of heroin addicts to learn how to deal with the loss of a loved one.

Lora Schroeder lost her daughter, Sammie, who dated Michael until her death from a heroin overdose in 2013.

"She had at one point dislocated her shoulder and was given opiates, and it just went from there," Schroeder said.

The couple are two of at least half a dozen young people from Davis who have died from overdoses in 18 months.